Gaming Laptop Sanity Check

[Macco26]

Ah so there is a chance of reverting back this behavior? And you discovered!
In that case Tongfang has sorted this out for new 2021 laptops (Ionico among them) for sure, as PL1 and PL2 are easily accessible from the new Control Center, with 15 customizable profiles.
Problem might remain for the keyboard, that I see pretty much unchanged. Hope their raised their QC

 

[ViceroyNick]

We stopped using that fix

Honestly right now I would recommend waiting for a Clevo chassis with similar specs to the Ionico.

Yea im leaning onto this option to either see what the iconio is like or if anything new comes out. Don't suppose you've heard anything on Clevo ones of similar specs being released?

 

[barlew]

Ah so there is a chance of reverting back this behavior? And you discovered!
In that case Tongfang has sorted this out for new 2021 laptops (Ionico among them) for sure, as PL1 and PL2 are easily accessible from the new Control Center, with 15 customizable profiles.
Problem might remain for the keyboard, that I see pretty much unchanged. Hope their raised their QC

As I said previously the reason it couldn't be fixed is because PCS and Tong Fang were concerned the battery would catch fire...

There is absolutely no indication yet that the issue is not present in the Ionico.

 

[barlew]

Yea im leaning onto this option to either see what the iconio is like or if anything new comes out. Don't suppose you've heard anything on Clevo ones of similar specs being released?

I have not seen anything but I have no doubt they will release higher specs.

 

[Macco26]

As I said previously the reason it couldn't be fixed is because PCS and Tong Fang were concerned the battery would catch fire...

There is absolutely no indication yet that the issue is not present in the Ionico.

Probably true. However I'd suggest you to dig inside the registry (for the part about the GamingCenter) or its .ini file. People have enabled parts of the center not even shown (Battery Optimizer) for the Vyper just by switching a 0 into a 1 in the registry. I wouldn't be surprised if PL1 and PL2 are accessible inside those lists but PCS isn't willing to modify them in the installer.
(PS: however PL = 120W on battery is madness. I'd encourage you to stick at max with 35W / 45W, still plenty for responsiveness, and you don't risk to catch fire, really )

 

[barlew]

Probably true. However I'd suggest you to dig inside the registry (for the part about the GamingCenter) or its .ini file. People have enabled parts of the center not even shown (Battery Optimizer) for the Vyper just by switching a 0 into a 1 in the registry. I wouldn't be surprised if PL1 and PL2 are accessible inside those lists but PCS isn't willing to modify them in the installer.
(PS: however PL = 120W on battery is madness. I'd encourage you to stick at max with 35W / 45W, still plenty for responsiveness, and you don't risk to catch fire, really )

I don't think you understand. PCS and Tong Fang said that in order for the fault to be fixed more power would have to be drawn from the battery. Unfortunately this was putting too much stress on the battery to the point it may catch fire.

I.e. even drawing 35 Watt from the battery was risking it to catch fire. Do you understand why PCS started refunding people who bought that chassis now?

 

[Macco26]

Since among all the resellers PCS is the only one who got this complaints, no reviewers (Boat, Jarrod, OWNorDisown) told a thing about this battery problem* for the 2020 generation, and since the chassis is the same, I think PCS decided to underperform the chassis together with the ODM to show better battery results. If I recall correctly Bob of All trades spoke of like 3 hours of battery like in the other resellers name of the Vyper. But he did not complain of those 3 hours being totally unusable. So I imagine this chassis DOES ALLOW to work better than how PCS intends. That's why I'd check into the registry for this to happen. However who chose for the refunds, good for him, and good riddance of the laptop if that's the case.

Regarding new 2021 chassis:
for now I have only the notebookcheck review of a Tongfang 2021 chassis, and this is about the Battery (battery capacity is smaller than Ionico, btw, it's slightly a different chassis):

Despite enabling graphics switching, the 17-incher didn't even last 5 hours in our idle test with minimum brightness. Just under 3.5 hours of Internet surfing over WLAN (medium brightness) is also poor. In comparison: The competition offers between 19% and 145% longer runtimes in total.​

If it went unusuable I think Notebookcheck would have raised some hands...

* Jarrod in his Max-15 review told he was unable to play the Witcher3 in battery mode with more than 13 FPS, so that could be something similar, tbh.

 

[barlew]

Since among all the resellers PCS is the only one who got this complaints, no reviewers (Boat, Jarrod, OWNorDisown) told a thing about this battery problem* for the 2020 generation, and since the chassis is the same, I think PCS decided to underperform the chassis together with the ODM to show better battery results. If I recall correctly Bob of All trades spoke of like 3 hours of battery like in the other resellers name of the Vyper. But he did not complain of those 3 hours being totally unusable. So I imagine this chassis DOES ALLOW to work better than how PCS intends. That's why I'd check into the registry for this to happen. However who chose for the refunds, good for him, and good riddance of the laptop if that's the case.

Regarding new 2021 chassis:
for now I have only the notebookcheck review of a Tongfang 2021 chassis, and this is about the Battery (battery capacity is smaller than Ionico, btw, it's slightly a different chassis):

Despite enabling graphics switching, the 17-incher didn't even last 5 hours in our idle test with minimum brightness. Just under 3.5 hours of Internet surfing over WLAN (medium brightness) is also poor. In comparison: The competition offers between 19% and 145% longer runtimes in total.​

If it went unusuable I think Notebookcheck would have raised some hands...

* Jarrod in his Max-15 review told he was unable to play the Witcher3 in battery mode with more than 13 FPS, so that could be something similar, tbh.

So where you are going wrong here is you are comparing Tong Fang chassis between different resellers as apples to apples. You need to get that out of your head and treat them as completely different laptops.

Each reseller configures their chassis in completely different ways. You cannot compare them.

I honestly hope the Ionico turns out to be everything you hope it will be and that all of the issues of the previous chassis are sorted. At this point I am bowing out of the conversation because yet again you are not listening to people with considerably more experience than you and choosing to completely ignore facts.

You have bought a laptop from PCS not from the resellers you have read reviews from. You literally have no idea how it is going to perform because nobody has had hands on with the Ionico yet.

 

[Macco26]

I wish I had seen more reviews of the PCS branded laptops, I do know PCS has the less customized and feature rich BIOS among all the resellers. I do hope they don't f*ck up too much with their near 0 personalization. In the end, the real engineering is done by the ODM, so I do hope the community feedback Tongfang got from the others during these months will help also PCS, even if they did not take part in this improvement program.
I sincerely do hope so, but you can be right. Wish me luck.

 

[Greenman]

I'd echo those saying wait for a Clevo. My Recoil TongFang (RTX 2070) was RMAd 3 times due to a faulty motherboard. Had to be replaced each time. Had a refund in the end and now waiting on a Ryzen Clevo.

For now I'm on my old 970m Clevo. Dodgy shift key but running fine otherwise. A family member also has my other old Clevo (Nvidia 555m) and that's also running fine to this day.

 

[Macco26]

The less customization in BIOS simply means PCS has not staff to waste time to personalize and ask the ODM something better than stock. They consider what the ODM gives to be pretty much ok without anything additional. Other resellers take their time in community forums, reddit, bug fixing time and then pay additional fees to the ODM to actually update their BIOS vs the stock available to anybody.

Is it game changing? I don't think so. Why am I saying this? Because while not doing anything PCS still gets all the benefits from past generation, because the next laptop will be better than last generation thanks to the contribution of the others. Cheap but smart.

Example? I don't have a Vyper, nor a Ionico (YET), but just yesterday I found this thread in this same forum for a Vyper III review from an Italian guy. Probably you can't understand it, but I can and suggest you to google translate what's saying. He has the Vyper late 2020, with newest QHD screen (but same RTX 20 series GPU ofc). He explains how he's happy of battery usage of his Vyper (Vyper good at battery???), its RESPONSIVENESS under battery. He uses it in the office out of the plug with Office and AutoCAD. And can't complain of a single thing about battery usage.
Are the other Vyper owners all liars ? Absolutely not. I suspect Early 2020 Vypers (the ones with FullHD) got revised along the year and the QHD versions have now better BIOS udpate (or hardware, for what we know) and allow flawless battery operation.
So, should I expect the same to migrate to the Ionico? Of course, being the newest weapon in the Tongfang arsenal.

About the Clevos: I am coming from a Clevo. It lasted 5 years, but by approaching its 3rd year, its keyboard had to be replaced (WASD presses no more 100% reliable) and, above all, broke its MXM GTX970M four times, all in the last 2 years. FOUR TIMES. I paid for 1 out of 3 replacements, rest under warranty. At last break I couldn't stand it anymore. Serious VRM thermals deficiency I say. And also the replaced keyboard had started to miss some presses again (not just bad engravings a-la Tongfang); but GPU outage solved the probem entirely: RIP Clevo.
So in the end: Tongfang might have a high RMA rate, but don't consider Clevo is any better. At least this is what my direct experience told me.

 

[barlew]

The less customization in BIOS simply means PCS has not staff to waste time to personalize and ask the ODM something better than stock. They consider what the ODM gives to be pretty much ok without anything additional. Other resellers take their time in community forums, reddit, bug fixing time and then pay additional fees to the ODM to actually update their BIOS vs the stock available to anybody.

I would be careful mate. You are making accusations against PCS here that you are stating as fact. You cannot possibly know that this is how PCS operate.

*Edit* I also want to point out that the review you have linked to is for the 15.6 inch version of the Vyper. That model never had any problems with the battery so I am not surprised this user did not have any. The severe battery problems were seen in the Vyper 17 inch all the way up to it being withdrawn and replaced with the Ionico.

 

[Stephen M]

Never had a problem with Clevo, the Octane is probably best laptop/DTR I have had. Got the new Nova as wanted a smaller 15.6" for travel.

 

[Macco26]

I would be careful mate. You are making accusations against PCS here that you are stating as fact. You cannot possibly know that this is how PCS operate.

*Edit* I also want to point out that the review you have linked to is for the 15.6 inch version of the Vyper. That model never had any problems with the battery so I am not surprised this user did not have any. The severe battery problems were seen in the Vyper 17 inch all the way up to it being withdrawn and replaced with the Ionico.

Should I be careful, lol? I did not accuse them of anything bad. They are assemblers, and they can perfectly take the default chassis and offer it to the public without any problem or infringing any law, as like as managing Desktop parts (motherboards, cases, etc.), where there is not software customization, still perfectly fine.

On the other hand you, with your continous suggestions in every thread where anybody asking for advice, to steer from the Ionico, a machine you never got in touch with, just because past year, a similar chassis (but notably different motherboard, because different RTX for once) had problems, is probably crippling PCS business (which is trying to sell them) more than my 'BIOS lack of customization accusations', lol.

 

[barlew]

Should I be careful, lol? I did not accuse them of anything bad. They are assemblers, and they can perfectly take the default chassis and offer it to the public without any problem or infringing any law, as like as managing Desktop parts (motherboards, cases, etc.), where there is not software customization, still perfectly fine.

On the other hand you, with your continous suggestions in every thread where anybody asking for advice, to steer from the Ionico, a machine you never got in touch with, just because past year, a similar chassis (but notably different motherboard, because different RTX for once) had problems, is probably crippling PCS business (which is trying to sell them) more than my 'BIOS lack of customization accusations', lol.

It may be the language barrier but your phrasing in the first paragraph, to me at least suggests that you feel PCS would think providing a better BIOS is a waste of time and that they do not listen to their community. I know for a fact point number 2 is incorrect as they are in these forums quite frequently and provide excellent feedback when concerns are raised. We also have no idea what their relationship with the ODM is but you seem to write it as fact.

I and many other users of these forums have raised many valid concerns surrounding Tong Fang laptops as they have an extremely bad track record. As you well know I have said to you on many occasions that I hope the Ionico does not have any issues however I will not endorse it as 3 of last years Tong Fang chassis (not just the Vyper) were really quite poor.